This is part of a 3 part mini-series looking at the planning phase of setting up and starting your business blog.

Each post will focus on one of the 3 key questions that you should have clear answers for as you set up your blog before you start to write it.

Question 2:
Who are you writing for?

Unless you are writing a personal blog, and that’s really not what we are dealing with here, then you are writing your blog with a business purpose in mind – just as we looked at in the 1st Key Question. This in turn means that you are writing for someone, for an audience, who you are hoping will not only read your blog but react well to its content and to you as the author.

To achieve this, need to be clear about this audience - your readers - and what they are going to expect from you and from your blog. You’ll also need to know how best to go about getting those reactions and building on them. This knowledge needs to influence every aspect of your blog including:

• what your blog looks like
• the content of your blog
• the style of how you write it
• the length and frequency of the posts
• how you elicit comments and feedback

In fact, what you are looking for is to encourage your target audience to engage with you and your blog in what I term the 5Rs:

• Read: first of all you need to create subject matter which will encourage people to visit your blog and then read what you’re writing about.
• Return: once they have visited for the first time, you have the opportunity to give your readers something they’ll wish to read more of, hence encouraging then to return to your blog.
• Reply: you are looking to encourage dialogue and communication so you must find subjects and a style which encourages them to express an opinion about it and reply to the post.
• Refer: provide your readers with enough compelling, relevant and interesting content and they’ll want to recommend it to everyone.
• RSS: encourage them to sign up and receive what you are writing as and when it appears using RSS either directly or via email.

So just how do you find out what they want? Well, first and foremost, you are as much a part of the target audience as you are the author! It’s your area of specialism, so bear in mind your own areas of interest as you write, but a also look at what you are doing and writing with a critical eye from time to time and check you are still on track. In addition, take the time to listen to your readers. Listen to what they are saying in the comments they post on your blog or in the emails you receive from them. When you are at conferences and exhibitions, note down what are the hot topics that everyone is talking about – they are literally giving you your killer content posts on a plate!

But do remember that different blogs have different aims and therefore very different audiences. An internal blog, for example, will be aimed at talking primarily at employees, while an external blog with a customer support focus will need to provide exact information and specific answers within tight timeframes. Of course, the more than you can prepare for this in advance of starting the blog, the better focused and (probably) more successful it will be.

To take a look at how all elements of a blog come together to fit with the audience it is targeting, I’d like to recommend that you take a look at Sony and the two blogs that they launched last year for different parts of their business and for very different audiences.

1. The first was the Sony Playstation blog which is heavily branded with a very specific topic range and audience in mind which has been attracted in droves to the site. Everything about the blog caters to this audience, their interests and ultimately the games that they are being encouraged to find out about and buy. Language, content and imagery all support this beautifully.

2. The second was the Sony Electronics blog dealing with a very different part of the business, a very different product range and therefore a very different audience in terms of both interests and priorities. The frequency and content were both targeted towards their expected readers and they responded in their own way which, of course, also needed to be handled correctly.

In summary, you need to ensure that you are always encouraging your readers to act on an appropriate aspect of the 5Rs. So, make sure that your business blog has a well defined theme and, once you have decided that, write your posts with it firmly in mind (remember keeping your aims on your monitor). Don’t forget to use your RSS reader to keep up to date with what is happening in the areas that your blog covers and keeping offering your opinions on relevant and interesting items in your posts. Finally, keep encouraging feedback from this target audience and make sure that you respond to the comments that your readers leave.

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